Monthly Archives: March 2019

The links between smoking and cancer risk are well established and reflected in high public awareness, heavy taxes and advertising bans. But the links between moderate alcohol consumption and cancer risk are less well communicated. New research published in BMC Public Health, compares cancer risks between alcohol and tobacco so that people can make better informed judgments.

For many years, members of the Dutch Consortium for Healthcare Evaluation and Research in Obstetrics and Gynecology (NVOG Consortium) have been working on the improvement of care for patients with threatened preterm birth. One of the research topics, the safety and effectiveness of labor-suppressing tocolytic medications, is covered in the APOSTEL trials. In this blog, we would like to outline the APOSTEL trials that have been performed so far, provide an update on the current project, the APOSTEL 8 trial, and provide different stakeholders’ views on recruitment of pregnant women in randomized trials from our recent paper in BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth.

BMC Cell Biology has been recently relaunched as BMC Molecular and Cell Biology, with a revamped journal and scope. Here, Managing Editor Maria Hodges and Editor Alison Cuff tell us more about this exciting addition to the BMC series portfolio of journals.

As we learn more about the microbiome through next generation sequencing (NGS) technologies, the more we become aware of the extent of its impact on us. Research published in BMC Microbiology now finds an association between differences in patients’ gut microbiomes and the chances of postoperative complications. Here to tell us about the study and NGS as a future diagnostic tool is lead author Felix Schmitt.

March is Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month. Colorectal cancer (CRC), also known as bowel cancer, is the second highest cause of death in Europe. Although we are now better at diagnosing the disease at an earlier stage through the bowel screening program and have made improvements in surgical methods and therapy, still only half of the patients diagnosed with CRC are alive after 5 years. Therefore, awareness and treatment clearly needs to improve if we are going to increase patient survival rates and allow patients to live longer with a better quality of life.

As populations age, health care expenditures rise, putting strain on national insurance systems. A new paper in BMC Geriatrics examines new ways to assess the economic burden of chronic conditions in older adults in Japan, highlighting a previously-unstudied association that could be used across countries with similarly aging populations.